Matthew Price

1. The next Internet generation
2. A question of loyalty
3. Awareness & acquisition
4. Segmentation & targeting
5. Promotion & reinforcement
6. Transaction & fulfilment
7. Support
8. Cross-sell/up-sell
9. One conclusion

The next Internet generation

As the Internet horizon broadens in terms of the types of people using the Web and the growing variety of access technologies, such as WAP and Interactive TV, then those companies that plan to survive and thrive on the Web will have to deal with some fairly dramatic problems.

What is now critical to business success is scalability in terms of the ability to rapidly develop new or additional Web functionality to meet the evolving needs of your customers, because no-one as yet fully understands how users will react online.

As a result, the real imperative behind any Web development must be to put systems in place through which you can understand how your customers are behaving and which enable you to react quickly and appropriately to exploit any new areas of opportunity. Because, if you don’t, your competitors will.

The failure of HTML to satisfy this need has driven the development and acceptance of XML as organisations have sought a solution that is capable of:

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A question of loyalty

Anyone who has ever done any marketing will recognise the “customer lifecycle” model (see Figure 1). It is, perhaps, the one constant in the world of change that the Internet has created. The only real difference is the point at which any company finds itself.

Figure 1 . Customer life cycle

Most new dot.com companies will be in the position of having no customers on which to build their business, and so must focus their initial activities on marketing and developing new prospects. The more traditional “Brick and Mortar” companies already have an established customer base, so their success on the Internet is dependent upon their ability to bridge the gap between the real and online worlds.

The good news, however, is that wherever a company finds itself in the customer lifecycle there are a number of technologies and techniques that can be employed to attract and retain customers, although the overriding determinant of ongoing success is unquestionably the ability to engender customer loyalty.

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Awareness & acquisition

A number of tools already exist to generate and direct customer traffic onto a Web site, including the use of banner advertisements on other sites, gaining a high ranking in search engine results, and even highlighting the availability of the Web site in written correspondence.

However, the key challenge is not just to get potential customers to your Web site, but to keep them there and make sure that they come back again and again. Research shows that you have just six seconds in which to engage a customer’s attention and persuade them to stay a little longer before they decide to move on elsewhere - often never to return.

Those organisations that already have existing customer data must ensure that it is utilised effectively when a customer first visits the site, for example with a personalised greeting, in order that the gap between the real and online worlds is bridged and the customer feels positively welcomed and comfortable.

Even where no such customer data exists it is possible to utilise the information that customers involuntarily give you, such as their IP address (and hence country of origin) and the language setting in their Browser, to make educated guesses as to how best to serve their needs. For example, Letsbuyit.com has exactly the same infrastructure for its content, but is able to serve its customers in their preferred language.

The key factors in creating e-loyalty are service (or convenience) and trust. And of these two, trust is especially important, particularly for new dot.com companies that have no established track record. Consequently, every interaction with the customer should be designed to increase the company’s rating on the customer’s “Trust-meter” - so be open about your privacy statements and be careful about what information you ask your customers to provide (if there’s no mutual benefit in you having it, why risk aggravating the relationship?)

However, as well as building up trust it is also vital to personalise the customer’s online experience so that it becomes easier to interact with each other and provide an enhanced level of service. XML’s ability to integrate data and exchange and target content enables richly structured and highly personalised information to be provided. As well as immediately increasing customer satisfaction, the longer-term result is more loyal customers.

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Segmentation & targeting

The ultimate aim of any Web site should be to get the customer to think, “this was built just for me”. For example, BMG Entertainment (bmg.com), one of the largest companies in the world for selling records, would never dream of showing Cliff Richard records to an Ozzy Osbourne fan!

However, despite what you may think, segmenting your audience to deliver a personalised experience is actually quite easy to do. Giving you customers three initial choice, followed by a further three choice would mean that in just two clicks you have segmented your audience into nine possible demographic groups. You can even use the IP address to identify corporate customers and brand your site accordingly for that company, right down to a personalised greeting such as “Welcome Bob, your corporate discount is 15%”.

The ability to perform such seamless segmentation, which is now being further enabled by the use of XML, has marked the end of the era for maintaining Internet, Extranet and Intranet systems, because one infrastructure that allows the delivery of personalised content can now be used to ensure that people only see what they are supposed to see.

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Promotion & reinforcement

It may be possible to create the best online strategy in the world, but if it doesn’t seamlessly match-up to your off-line business strategy then you will be heading for real trouble. At vauxhall.co.uk information that is captured on the Web site is shared with the company’s dealer network, so that the cars can be delivered directly to the customer’s door without the customer having to do anything as mundane as calling the dealer.

For this very reason XML is evolving as a foundation for sharing information between disparate systems used among companies who have partner, customer and supplier relationships. In addition, XML is also being used as a means for sharing syndicated content such as news feeds and stock prices.

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Transaction & fulfilment

An online purchase will only ever be completed if the customer believes that the company will deliver what it promises and trusts the company enough to provide their address and credit card details.

Therefore, when a purchase is made there is already a tremendous amount of trust that has been created, so any purchase must be treated as the beginning of the next transaction. In other words, you must consider how the information gained this time can be used to make the customer’s life even easier the next time they visit.

Amazon.com pioneered the concept of “One click ordering”, whereby once a customer has made their first purchase they do not need to re-enter their personal and delivery details for any subsequent purchases. As a result, customers are less likely to use another company’s services, because it seems too much unnecessary hassle to move. Parallels can also be drawn with the complexity of changing your bank account - the perceived complexity and risks involved in moving banks are such that customers have to be extremely dissatisfied to even consider a change.

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Support

The provision of customer support services is another way in which to gain more trust from your customers, acquire more information with which to serve them better and help them to move on to their next purchase. Following each purchase companies should canvas the customers opinion about the purchasing experience, in terms of “how was the product?” and “how can we make it better?”

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Cross-sell/up-sell

Have gleaned information about your customers the logical next step is to draw some intelligent conclusion about what else they might be interested in and present them with your suggestions. For example, if a customer purchases suntan lotion the chances are that they will be sunbathing. So, why not offer them the opportunity to purchase a bathing costume or a pair of sunglasses?

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One conclusion

So, what then have we learnt? Well, it is all just about one-to-one marketing - let’s find out who is purchasing 100%, or 70% or 30% of their “widgets” from us and then treat them accordingly.

The big question, of course, is how do you do that. How can you cost-effectively maintain a site that caters for different countries and different information needs?

The answer lies in developing an infrastructure that is scalable, quick to change and has the personalisation of content at its core - a system that allows you to react to changes in your marketplace, across multiple segments, very quickly.

ATG’s Dynamo platform is enabling leading dot.com companies to cost-effectively develop enduring customer relationships. Its fully scalable and open architecture is designed to deliver a highly personalised and unified user experience and enable organisations to respond quickly and effectively to evolving market needs.

ATG strongly supports the use of XML as a mechanism for data integration, content exchange and content targeting, which is why the latest release of our Dynamo Product Suite now includes the following new features:

But even with such powerful tools at your disposal developing an effective ICRM capability could take you some time. If you start now you can be competitive, but there’s a whole bunch of others that are doing just the same. Ultimately, the most successful companies will not just be the ones with the technology, but the ones that have the vision to drive it.

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